Vamos Festival : 4th June - 10th July (Newcastle Gateshead)

¡VAMOS! is a festival that celebrates Spanish and Portuguese speaking cultures in Newcastle Gateshead, UK. Additionally there are events throughout the year alongside the festival programme. ¡VAMOS! combines cuisine, art, film, theatre, dance, music, literature, fashion, sport and education. It offers an international festival appealing to artists, partners and mainstream audiences that is unconstrained by art form, age-group or regional location. The 2010 version confirmed that ¡VAMOS! has established an important growing audience in the region and the interest of people coming from far away.

‘Primarily people wanted more of everything! More artists, more countries represented, more music, more food! It seemed to me to have struck a deep chord. It was the sort of event that people seemed to expect in London but not in Newcastle and I was very pleased to be a part of it.’
Junot Diaz (awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and read at ¡VAMOS! 2006)

Since 2006, ¡VAMOS! Festival has delivered to over 70,000 people in North East England a vibrant, accessible and diverse programme of 200+ events celebrating Latin and Lusophone cultures. This has included three 10 day festivals, 2 weekender editions and a multitude of special one-off events and projects. These have been aimed at all age groups and delivered in close partnerships involving Newcastle University, Theatre Royal Newcastle, The Sage Gateshead, Tyneside Cinema, Northern Stage and Dance City amongst a total of 65+ partners.¡VAMOS! has engaged with over 800 artists and performers resulting in 26 commissions, 12 UK premieres and 1500 participants in education projects. It has also delivered 2 international academic conferences with Newcastle Univeristy which brought 165 International delegates to the region.